Growing up, I taught my mother about Judaism. An avid Hebrew School student, I relished in re-telling my day’s stories and lessons to my mother who hadn’t had a formal education in such things. Over the years, as I studied the more political and ethical aspects of my religion, the stories and the spirituality they inspired began to fade. Finally, like many suburban students, I planted myself in a small liberal arts college where religion became a theoretical taboo; it just did not seem to have a place on our isolated campus where socialism was all the rage.
I didn’t give it all that much thought until the year after my father’s passing. As the High Holy Days approached, I found myself missing the piety of my youth. The more I tried to feel connected to religion, tradition, spirituality, God, the more alone I felt. Then a friend who dedicates her life’s work to Judaism, told me a story: When she was a little girl, she and her younger sister would climb into bed with their parents after Yom Kippur services and, together, the four would read a picture book about Jonah. She talked about the comfort that stemmed from that familiar tradition; the knowing that it would be a lifelong memory to bind them. And I realized that this friend took more from those family moments than from any D’var Torah. I knew then that I had been seeking connection in the wrong places.
I thought of my mother, 3,000 miles across the country, sitting in the synagogue by herself, but not quite alone. My mother (a woman who had, I suspected, always sat through services for my sake or my father’s) had uncovered a profound sense of spirituality — especially profound because she was entirely unaware of it; it had simply become a part of her. For my mother, being in the synagogue meant being close to my father. It was the place where they had met. It was a home he helped to build for a growing community. It was a place where we shared in our celebrations. And so, it seems, my father is very much alive in that sanctuary surrounded by memories. Our little temple in the woods still houses his soul.
So I turned inward and recalled how, sitting there next to my mother the week before Rosh Hashanah, I had kept watch over one tree as its leaves rustled ever so slightly; a rustling I was certain was my father nodding at us, winking, smiling, dozing, just as he’d done for so many years from the bimah. For the first time since my childhood, I believed in something I could not explain. I began to understand that I was seeking mysticism, and that I could not find that in a synagogue or a prayer book. For me, my father was very much alive during that Rosh Hashanah morning service, but outside, in that delicate breeze whispering to the leaves.
It was around then I began to develop a certain awareness I had not known before. And, while I had been reluctant to recognize it, what I actually sought was a way back to my father. I remembered the last time we were together — it had been around Chanukah. I closed my eyes and saw us — my mother, my father, my grandmother, me — in our living room, and I heard music. Almost not of my own accord, I put on the music of memory — Richie Havens … “Let the river rock you like a cradle; climb to the treetops, child, if you’re able. Come and touch the things you cannot feel … If all the things you feel ain’t what they seem, then don’t mind me ‘cuz I ain’t nothin’ but a dream.” I listened, over and over again, imagining myself back on that night, when my father and I together had heard that song for the first time. I saw my mother, held in a daze by whatever long-ago memory the song conjured. A silent flood of tears ordered my eyes remain shut, and I could see so clearly the expression on my father’s face as he’d gazed at my mother, entranced by her listening in her private world. I wrapped myself in my own arms, and he was there beside me.
From that night forward, I have found him every time I’ve needed to — in music, in trees, the middle of the ocean. Finally, I had to acknowledge that, if you open yourself to the worst kind of pain, stop searching and simply breathe in the life all around you, you may stumble upon the absolute holiness for which you yearn. As the saying goes, “It is a tree of life.”
Leah S. Abrams is an essay and fiction writer, and the executive director of the Custom Made Theatre Company in San Francisco.